50 \ ( " , r". ,':' " ''! , \ \ " . :-0 J 1: 0 / . \ /' I L '\ " (. of ' I l /1 ... r '" :; ..' y / ') '..., ,............ ;:;. 0:': ;..;...;';'"":;. . .;; .;. :;:. ',' .:: . 0:: ;:: ;:.;.' see the President and dis- cuss with him what might be done to improve the situation. " But before F orrestal was ready to see the Presi- dent he convened a series of evening meetings in his Pentagon office with hig h -level officers. For the first time, F orrestal told me, he was finding that he trusted some se- nior Army generals more than his former Navy col- leagues; Eisenhower and General Omar Bradley, in particular, had risen in his estimation. After these meetings, F orrestal said he was ready to see the President. The meeting, delayed because of a long campaign trip by President Tru- man, took place on October 5, 1948. It was a remarkable moment: Forrestal told President Truman that he had been wrong in 1946 and 1947, and that neither he nor anyone else could make the existing National Security Act work. He was ready to support its revision. His mood struck me as a strange combination of suppressed emotion, courage, and a sense of defeat. President Truman accepted For- restal's change of heart in a matter-of- fact manner, with no gloating. With the election only a month away, For- restal, who had told me he believed Thomas E. Dewey's victory in the upcoming election was certain, may have regarded his discussions as aca- demic. But the President asked him to head up a new legislative drafting team, and ten months later, on August 10, 1949, with Truman reëlected and after another round of arguments be- tween the White House and Congress and, as usual, the Navy, the present Department of Defense came into ex- istence. "This year I thought I'd go with a cowl neck, for a change." of National Defense almost no real authority. But this was the best the President could get at the time, and he decided to accept it. The National Security Act of 1947 had serious flaws. There was no chair- man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, so the chiefs were left to quarrel among them- selves without anyone except the Presi- dent to settle their differences. The Secretary of Defense had no deputy and almost no staff. Nevertheless, the Pres- ident felt, and I agreed, that this con- stituted an improvement over the sys- tem with which we had fought the Second World War. "Maybe we can strengthen it as time goes by," he said. In this hope President Truman was prescient. Despite its flaws, the N ation- al Security Act of 1947 was by far the biggest single step taken in the creation of the present-day national-security structure. I N choosing the first Secretary of Defense, the President decided to name the man who had been most opposed to the creation of the position, and had succeeded in weakening it- James Forrestal. It was a brilliant tac- tical decision, and one that had a pro- found effect on the future of the Penta- gon. The President's motive in choosing F orrestal was simple: if F or- restal remained Secretary of the Navy, he would make life unbearable for whoever was Secretary of Defense; if, on the other hand, he was the Secretary of Defense, he would have to try to make the system work. Despite his original opposition to the . . creation of the position, F orrestal ac- cepted the appointment immediately. He was sworn in as the first Secretary of Defense on September 17, 1947, in an atmosphere of rising Cold War tensions. I think he sensed his di- lemma as soon as he was offered the position: he now had to deal with the problems he had done so much to create. In more than forty-five years in Washington, I know of no more dra- matic metamorphosis than the one James Forrestal underwent in 1948. The process began almost immediately upon his moving to the Pentagon. For- restal had to operate under the con- straints that he himself had insisted on -8 tiny staff, no deputies, and a very limited mandate. Understaffed and overworked, he had to do everything himself, relying on a few talented but also overworked personal aides. As ear- ly as March, 1948, "after a four-day meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Key West, F orrestal asked the Pres- ident to issue an executive order modi- fying his original instructions. In our regular private breakfasts, F orrestal began to express increasing frustration at his inability to do his job. Then, in the summer of 1948, less than ten months after taking office, he made a startling statement to me. "Clark," he said, "I was wrong. I cannot make this work. No one can make it work." I knew how difficult it must have been for him to say that, even alone and to a friend. "You have done the very best you could, the best that anyone could have done," I replied. "You should go J AMES FORRESTAL'S legacy to the nation also included the creation of the National Security Council, al- though not in the form he originally wanted. He had long advocated an interagency group to coördinate for- eign and defense policy, and he quickly converted me to the idea We worked together to insure its inclusion in the final version of the revised bill on uni- fication. But F orrestal wanted the N a-